Monthly Archives: February 2012

DUE TO a Football League fixture/calendar conspiracy it’s only our second chance to celebrate the exact anniversary of mighty Boro’s famous Carling Cup triumph at Cardiff.
Not being one to miss that kind of opportunity to caress a cultural touchstone here’s my nostalgic musings on the historic importance of ACTUALLY WINNING A TROPHY and what a fantastic emotional experience it was for everyone who was there.
It opened the door to Europe and fixtures inconceivable on the Holgate. It ushered in a new golden era of possibilities and excitement and raised expectation levels to unsustainable levels, the painful fall from which has left profound psychic bruising that still smarts.
But hey, let’s not beat ourselves up about the hangover. Let’s recall the party…

READING did to Boro what we did to countless teams earlier this season.
The form side in the division soaked up the pressure with a highly organised defence and hard working midfield sticking tenaciously to the task – much as bubbling Boro did in August and September – then hit quickly on the break to make their few chances count.
You think having done it themselves so often Boro would know how to deal with it.
Credit where it is due: it was a fantastic archetypal Championship away performance. While Boro’s display was, well, just average. And that is not good enough.

BORO’S decision to let Barry Robson go has been met with some raised eyebrows.
The battling Scot has been probably Boro’s second most important player over the past 12 months (after fellow Titian terrier and midfield linchpin Nicky Bailey) and a key component of the steady – if currently stuttering – momentum of the Mogganaut.
He consistently offers determination, experience, drive, steel and goals in midfield and displays exactly the fierce will to win needed to win games in an attritional grind of a division. So why have Boro not put up a fight to keep him at the Riverside?

BORO’S History Boys ended one of football’s longest running hoodoos with a scrappy win over Nottingham Forest.
About bloody time too! After decades of near misses, spitefully scripted heart-breaking late levellers and countless one sided batterings, Boro have finally beaten them.
This tetchy triumph over the Tricky Trees was the first on Teesside since a narrow 1-0 in December 1973. Hands up who remembers that. Hands up who was even born!

BORO were getting battered and we got off the hook. The abandonment was a real result for us because on balance of play, we were going to get a real mauling. Ironically the third of a game which was called off earned Boro’s longest highlight’s package this term on the Football League Show and the highlights they showed were actually balanced it really was that one sided. Ipswich’s victory was inevitable.
Unfortunately for them, the abandonment was also inevitable. The pitch passed the 11am inspection because it was playable under the tent. Did they think they could leave it on and start the game under there?

BORO’S Academy lads put in a spirited show against the Premier League’s form side. Eight of the side that finished the game came off the Hurworth production line. Eight of our own. It was certainly no disgrace to be edged out. In fact, if anything that young mix-and-match side have every right to feel a little disappointed they didn’t win.

THE BLOG that scours through YouTube so you don’t have to: Part XII
With the FA Cup clash derby tension bubbling up nicely now, thoughts naturally turn to classic Tees-Wear encounters of the past. The memories come flooding back of all those time Boro have beaten Sunderland. There’s loads of them. It was routine in the 90s.
There are some important moments in terrace folklore to be relived as part of the big match build: Bernie up on the Holgate fence in a quick-fire celebration, a Parky worldy, Emerson cracking home a rocket shot at Roker, Jamie Pollock stuffed some Mackem chanting straight back down their throats with a late winner. So to get you in the mood for the big match, here’s some footage of derby clashes of the past. Enjoy.

GOOD News bloggosphere: Untypical Boro won the coveted Phillip Hickey Trophy for columnist and/or blogger of the year at the prestigious Cordners Awards, the annual North East hack pack back-slapping beano at the National Glass Centre in Sunderland, within audible booing range of the Stadium of Light.
Obviously it is good news for me. It’s always nice to win stuff and have people buy you beer. But I think it is good too in a wider sense that a football column can shrug off the challenges of the why-oh-why handwringinging worthies and parish pump parochial pontification that so often dominate local newspaper columns that usually win these things. It is nice to have reflections on the elemental importance of the game break out of the solitary isolation of the back page ghetto and be recognised for what it is: the cultural glue that holds post-industrial towns together.
Football – whether Boro, Newcastle, Pools, Sunderland, Quakers, Barnsley or whatever – remains the only unifying collective experience that most ordinary people have, it is the often the central point of our identity as individuals and as communities. It is of vital importance. It is when I write about it anyway.